A new study says she's probably praying for God to give her more stickers than her friend Janie. (Shutterstock)

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Religion makes people more generous and empathetic toward their neighbor, right? Wrong, according to a study published Thursday in Current Biology. Forbes reports researchers found children from religious backgrounds are actually less altruistic than children from secular households. Researchers tested more than 1,100 Christian, Muslim, and nonreligious children between the ages of 5 and 12 from around the world. They gave the kids stickers and had them choose how many to share with another anonymous child. It turns out secular children shared more of their stickers. "Our findings support the notion that the secularization of moral discourse does not reduce human kindness," lead researcher Jean Decety tells Science. "In fact it does just the opposite."

But the relationship between religion and altruism in children was even more pronounced than that. Science reports the more religious a child's household—based on interviews with parents—the less generous the child. And while all kids shared fewer stickers as they got older, the difference was even more pronounced in kids from religious households, according to Forbes. Decety says the differences may be because of something called "moral licensing," in which an individual—unconsciously or not—feels like they can behave badly because they see themselves as a morally right person, Science reports. "These results reveal…how religion negatively influences children’s altruism, challenging the view that religiosity facilitates prosocial behavior," researchers conclude in the study.

After reading in more detail on the study, it actually seems like the authors have extrapolated moch more than is reasonable, and they left out what is actually the most directly inferable part of the study. The study was based off giving people something that appears nearly worthless. They gave children stickers and how many of those stickers that they want to give to others. Then showed the children an act of social injustice (someone bumping into someone else) and asked them what they would do. As a child, the only value I accorded stickers was in that stickers are given by teachers in lieu of grades. The better you did, the more stickers you got. As a parent, I saw similar practices with my own kids. But I also saw, outside of this specific context, stickers held no special value to my kids. I have a great deal of trouble trying to attribute to this a meaningful measure of generosity. Charitableness means giving something of value to someone who needs it (I.e. giving food to the poor), not giving something meaningless to a group you know nothing about. What is interesting, though is that the religious kids were far more responsive to the second test - reacting to a social injustice - a situation that was clearer and more directly connected with socially benevolent behavior than the sticker game. This was an area where the religious children, especially Muslims, appeared to demonstrate a vastly better ethical foundation. However in this, too, it is hard to attach meaningfulness, because the social injustice was something pretty meaningless. Overall, after reading the actual study, the authors seem unreasonable in the conclusions they arrive at. It seems like a very poorly designed test, and they seem to ignore conclusions that

vladislav

Nov 9, 2015 8:17 AM CST

bullsh*t I`ve yet to see an atheist run food pantry !

$82496178

Nov 9, 2015 5:58 AM CST

The evidence continues to pile up: Religion and spirituality are mutually exclusive. Religion cuts the world up into slices, whereas spirituality seeks to knit it back together.